Architecture

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Trappist monks’ new abbey of Our Lady of Novy Dvur, in the Czech Republic, is being built by Minimalist architect John Pawson, who designed Calvin Klein’s ﬂagship store, on Madison Avenue, as well as projects for Ian Schrager and Martha Stewart. Cloistered as a “shadow monk,” observing the daily rituals of silent labor and prayer, the author learns how Pawson created a brand-new physical context for a spiritual life that hasn’t changed in 1,000 years.

I am standing with the architect John Pawson on a snow-covered ridge in Bohemia, two hours outside of Prague, somewhere between Pilsen, in the Czech Republic, and Marienbad, the famous spa town near the German border. We are in a cemetery—or what will be one—and 50 feet away is the massive hull of Pawson’s latest creation, a Trappist monastery called Our Lady of Novy Dvur (New Square, in Czech). It is late March, and ice cracks under our feet as we walk toward a tall wooden cross at the center of the graveyard. “I tried to hide the cemetery at first,” says Pawson, “but when the monks noticed that, they were unhappy and asked to have it put where they could see it from the cloister. For them, that is the best part: they get to go to heaven.”

Learning to think like a monk was a big part of this commission for Pawson, 57, a native of Yorkshire who lives in London and is known for his pristine Minimalism. “When I told the monks this was a lifetime project, they became terribly upset, because they thought it was going to take forever. But now they understand that I will keep coming back only because there will always be something to get done,” he says. “They have limited funds, but their attitude is ‘God will provide.’ And I have been amazed that whenever they have needed money it has been there. At some points, admittedly, their priorities are different than mine.” Pawson wants to finish the downstairs chapel, for example, and banish awkward pieces of furniture that have found their way onto the premises. “They want to give money to other charities, so the chapel and Pawson-designed furnishings wait.” Much of the money for the building comes from donations, the rest from the work of the monks. Trappists, who are members of the Cistercian order, are famous for producing ales, preserves, and other products. So far, at Novy Dvur, they make mustard. Coming soon: hand cream. The first monks I see, in fact, are not wearing robes and sandals but blue coveralls and boots—their work clothes. They drive tractors, shear sheep, and use chain saws to cut wood to feed a giant furnace housed in a barn designed by Pawson.

Pawson tells me he is trying not to adhere to what he calls “Philip Johnson’s F’s for architects—Finish, Photograph, and Forget.” The monks, Pawson says, “teach by example.” They lead structured lives built around a daily sequence of seven church services, work, private prayer, reading, and the rising and setting of the sun. “Monastic architecture,” says Pawson, “has to mold itself around this elaborate choreography, making transitions between the monk’s spiritual and physical life seamless. Because Cistercian monastic life has not changed in 1,000 years,” he adds, “they know exactly what they need to pull this off architecturally. But they do not know that something is wrong until they actually see it built. That has been a challenge. We can build a section of the choir, and they will sit in it and say, ‘No, no, no.’ Today I noticed that a statue of the Virgin, which the monks pray to on their knees, is next to a stairwell door that leads from the sacristy to the basement.” On our way in from the cemetery, Pawson pushes this door open to find three monks praying at our feet. “I did that all wrong,” he whispers. “To build a new house is incredibly difficult,” he continues. “This is like building a miniature city that is a house. Except they don’t leave.”

The gravity of his statement sinks in later, as we stand in the cloister, with monks gliding by us on their way to different parts of the monastery. The cloister is enclosed by sheets of glass and has a cantilevered barrel vault. Sunlight fills the vault by day, making it seem like an infinite white ceiling. “Originally I put stairs in the cloister, because it is on a downhill slope,” Pawson says. “The monks rejected it, because they were concerned about wheelchairs.”

“Why?,” I ask, since all the monks seem to be quite young.

“They are going to be here for the rest of their lives,” he replies.

The Cistercian order is known for its severity. The Trappist branch started in Soligny-la-Trappe, France, in the 17th century, and today is spread around the world, with the largest concentrations in France and the United States. The monks take a vow of silence, and they are known for their industry. The most famous Trappist is the late Thomas Merton, who in 1948 published The Seven Storey Mountain, about his life in the monastery at Gethsemani, Kentucky.

The Novy Dvur commission came about in a most unusual way, Pawson says. Several of the monks saw pictures of the Calvin Klein flagship store, on Madison Avenue, which Pawson had designed, in Minimum, his 1996 best-selling book. They were especially impressed, he says, with “a photograph of the main sales floor from above, with two tables that to them looked like they could be altars.” Dom Patrick Olive, the abbot of Sept-Fons, a Cistercian monastery in Dompierre-sur-Besbre, near Lyon, France, received Minimum as a Christmas gift from Father Thomas, the architect turned monk who runs the bookstore in his monastery. Shortly thereafter, a group of young men from the Czech Republic appeared at Sept-Fons with a request to start a Trappist abbey in Bohemia. “I thought, Ah, if we do this, this is the kind of architecture I want,” Dom Patrick tells me. “And when we decided to go ahead, I said, ‘Why don’t we call Mr. Pawson?’”

Pawson invited Dom Patrick, Father Thomas, and two other monks to visit him at his London home, which is an extreme minimal environment—all limestone slabs, maple planks, and wood lacquered white. “They ate around my kitchen table, looked in every room,” Pawson says. “And then one of them bowled me over when he said, ‘Isn’t this a bit austere for us?’”

In the introduction to Minimum, Pawson writes, “To create simplicity, to reduce an artefact, an object, an artwork, or a room to its essential minimum, requires patience, effort and care.” His point of view is close to that of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s “Less is more.” Only, Pawson takes it further. “Almost nothing,” he says. Pawson cites Cistercian monastic design as an influence. “In the medieval Cistercian order, the aspiration to define a purer, simpler form of Christianity was reflected both in the lives of the monks, and the form and character of the monasteries that they built for themselves,” Pawson writes in Minimum. “They pursued a punishing, even life-threatening regime of extreme self-denial. Every Cistercian foundation was built to the same plan, and displayed exactly the same restraint in its use of materials and shapes.… Yet the result of this restraint, visible in the monasteries of Le Thoronet in Provence, or Fountains of Abbey in Yorkshire, is anything but poor. In fact, restraint has produced some of the most beautiful works of architecture that mankind has ever achieved.”

Since he wrote those words, Pawson has gained fame—but for secular buildings commissioned by decidedly un-monkish clients. In addition to Calvin Klein’s stores and a New York apartment for Klein in one of Richard Meier’s tower blocks overlooking the Hudson River, he has done projects for Martha Stewart and the hotelier Ian Schrager, and he designed Cathay Pacific Airways’ first-class lounges.

At Pawson’s suggestion, the Trappists even considered having new robes made by Calvin Klein. The designer flew by private jet to Novy Dvur, met with the abbot, and dined with the monks. He then selected very expensive wool—which he planned to donate—from the oldest loom in Lyon. The robes were to be embellished with ancient gold thread found in Milan. “Unfortunately, the monks will never get to wear Calvin’s robes,” Pawson tells me. When I ask him why, he shrugs. “Something went wrong in one of the conversations between Calvin and the abbot. I’m not really sure what was said, but Calvin was quite cross. And I do think the abbot became concerned that there might be articles headlined monk chic. It was really no one’s fault.”

As Pawson and I tour Novy Dvur and the 100 acres surrounding it over a two-day period, we live as shadow monks, even eating and sleeping with the 21 members of the community. This access is almost without precedent, because Trappists are cloistered. Traditionally, they open a monastery to outsiders only on the day of its consecration. Thereafter it is closed to the world.

One evening, Pawson and I enter the church during the short service known as Compline and take seats on a bench against the back wall. The monks, who stand 30 feet away, are bowed over at the waist, their heads covered by pointed white cowls. They appear in silhouette, because the church is illuminated only by a twilight-blue glow, coming from large light boxes, three on either side of the church, shaded by hanging screens. At 7:50, Compline ends with the solemn chant of “Salve Regina.” Then the monks walk in a procession from the church and head to their dormitory.

After Matins, at 3:15 a.m., the monks kneel in the choir for silent prayer, and then, before the start of a daily lecture in the chapter house by the abbot, at 6:15, they have time for rest or reading. There are three more offices—Mass, Terce, and Sext—before lunch, the day’s main meal, in the refectory at 12:15 p.m. They eat with their backs to the wall, four monks to a table, all four sitting on the same side. A table for the abbot and two other superiors is at the front of the room. There is a small wooden cabinet behind each monk for his bowl, tableware, and personal objects such as vitamins or pictures of Christ or saints.

All meals are eaten in silence. The lunch (soup, cabbage, and potatoes, with no dessert, except for sugar or honey in yogurt) is served by two brothers. A third monk pours pilsner beer into our earthenware bowls, which double as water bowls. After each meal, the monks wash their utensils in the dregs of their beer, using their thumb and forefinger to scrub them clean, before rolling them up neatly in their napkin and putting them away. The young monk to my left, who dines with his cowl pulled over his head, is about 24. Before he begins to eat, he takes a picture of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux from his cabinet, kisses it, and places it on the table to the right of his plate. He unfolds his napkin and tucks it into the front of his robe, then spreads the napkin over the table in front of him, placing his bowl and utensils on top of it. This protects his robe and makes cleaning up easy.

After lunch, Pawson and I go back to the church to look at it in daylight. The cloister at this hour is vibrant, the glass panels having caught the sun, casting a runway of light down the center of the passage. While the cloister is a “container for light,” says Pawson, “light in the church is experienced as a part of the fabric of the space”—inseparable from the planes of the lime-washed plaster walls and the granite floor. The light boxes and shields which define the church’s walls create dramatic compositions of indirect light.

Pawson is proud of the apse. He created a plunging staircase at the rear of the sanctuary, which leads to a door at the base of the apse. This door leads to the cemetery. It is covered over by planks of pine, which may be removed only when a monk is carried out on his bier. That has not yet occurred at Novy Dvur.